DIFFERENCE OF OPINION:The PMI published by London-based Markit said the sector was worsening as the index fell again last month to 48.5 from April’s 49.7
Taipei Times
Date: Jun 02, 2016
By: Lisa Wang / Staff reporter
The official Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) last month climbed for a third consecutive month to 54.9, another encouraging sign that the nation’s manufacturing sector is stabilizing, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday.
The PMI inched up 0.3 percentage points last month from 54.6 in April, continuing to stay above the threshold of 50 in a sign of expansion, the Taipei-based institute’s statistics showed.
“The uptrend over the past three months gives us stronger confidence that the manufacturing sector is stabilizing,” CIER president Wu Chung-shu (吳中書) told reporters at a news conference.
Employment was a main driver of last month’s PMI growth, with a solid gain of 4.1 percentage points to 54.1, Wu said.
Among key sub-indicators, new orders and imports increased 0.6 and 2.8 to 58 and 54.5 respectively, marking a third month of expansion for both, the data showed. [FULL STORY]
